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Monday, February 4, 2013

Olive and Sun-dried Tomato Bread Stick

Do you like to have some warm bread sticks to go with your soup? These bread sticks are easy to make and delicious to have with soup or simply as a snack.

I adapted the recipe from the book 《原味》Original Flavor by Carol. This is her latest book on bread-making and I really enjoy looking through the wide variety of bread recipes in the book. Special thanks to Cathy, for getting the book for me ^_^

1) Place all the bread dough ingredients into a mixer, except water and olive oil. Mix well. Slowly pour in the water (reserved about 30ml) and mix with the dry ingredients. Gradually add in the remaining reserved water and knead the dough for about 5 minutes. Add in the olive oil and knead for a further 5 minutes.

2) Add in the filling ingredients and gently knead to obtain a smooth round dough. Cover the dough and let it rest for about 30 to 45 minutes, or till doubled in size.

3) Gently knead the dough, cover and let it rest for about 10 minutes. Roll the dough to a square or rectangular sheet. Use a pizza cutter to cut the dough into desired long thin strips. Transfer the strips of dough to your baking pan. Cover and rest the dough for about 30 minutes.

4) Lightly brush the dough with egg wash and sprinkle some sesame seeds on top. Bake in preheated oven at 185C for about 15 to 18 minutes. Transfer to rack to cool.

I especially baked these yummy bread sticks for my earlier split pea soup. These bread sticks are great as a snack too. I packed a few of these bread sticks and a small cup of yogurt for my girl's tea-break. She dipped these bread sticks into her favorite berries yogurt for a quick and healthy snack.

As the texture of these bread stick is quite similar to soft pizza crust, I made a batch of pizza bread sticks for breakfast.

Method:

1) Lightly toast the bread sticks in an oven or toaster (175C) for about 3 to 5 minutes.

2) Spread a thin layer of tomato pizza sauce (I used some leftover minced chicken tomato paste) on the bread sticks. Sprinkle some chopped bell peppers, spring onion, olives and shredded cheese on top and bake till the cheese melts.

For variations, you can try with tuna fish mayo and corn niblets, or a Japanese fusion flavour of chopped unagi with wasabi mayo and shredded seaweed, or maybe a localised version of otak spread with chopped onion.